rDay Four-Hundred-Eighty-Nine

A busy day, full of errands and appointments.

First, we drop by the EOU (Eastern Oregon University, if you don’t know) Outdoor Shop to check out the selection of rental backpacks in anticipation of Kim’s forthcoming Eagle Caps Wilderness trek (women only). While there, I discover a wonderful set of sculptural objects festooning the wall. These assemblages apparently were conjured up by an art student who was inspired by study of extinct creatures in a Natural History class, so artifacts of outdoor gear and found materials were combined to suggest new species.  (Anybody reminded of Picasso’s “Bull’s Head“?)

Next, while Kim visits her dentist for routine oil change and service, I spend some time in the nearby library. There I discover a most fascinating magazine — FP, referring to Foreign Policy — chock full of way-above-average photography and some excellent writing. Associated with the limited (free) access digital media outlet, http://foreignpolicy.com/. I’ve read two issues just about cover to cover on my last couple of visits to our library (our best local government service, IMHO).

Then, we join up to visit the next door Farmers Market, selecting fresh berries,  corn and outstanding locally-made cheese, listening to busker music and smelling the fresh flowers.

Finally, after the heat of the day has dissipated a bit, we hit the nearby middle/high school track for running of the Charlie-bull and where I try to get a good number of briskly-walked laps several times a week.  Kids and other dog-owners are out now in the more tolerable early evening temp.   Here, as I zen-walk down the track, I am reminded of childhood on the farm when we “hoed ‘beans”. This operation was undertaken under direct sun, all day long, when soybeans had grown too high to be cultivated mechanically with a tractor-mounted cultivator rig, but still were infested with too many weeds. So it required taking machete (aka “corn knife”) in hand and walking down every row and chopping out weeds growing among the intermingled waist-high soybean bushes, typically for $1/hour or less unless you were working unpaid on your own family farm. I digress …

Bunker Hill, Then and Now

Brother Dennis turns our attention to this video published on July 18, 2016 by The New Yorker contrasting the long-disappeared Bunker Hill area of downtown Los Angeles of today with that of seventy years ago.

Kim and I often used to bicycle this area early on Sunday mornings in the 80s and early 90s. When I first arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, the “improvements” and “renovations” were pretty much complete.

Iowa – Fall 1974: Upper & Lower Magnolia Farms

About midway through high school, the family moved to a different county, acquiring a farm in the hills near the tiny community of Magnolia.  Then a second farm two or three miles away was added to the holdings, this one located near a creek that flowed through a valley.   I drove to Iowa in the fall of 1974 from Los Angeles, slowly meandering along off-interstate, secondary roads the whole way (the Land Rover was capable of almost 55 mph downhill,  sometimes) and I wanted to photograph as I went (haven’t found those negatives yet).  Then I left the Land Rover parked in an Iowa shed after a few days and flew off to other easterly destinations for a time.

Magnolia?  More here and here, but not much.  Be skeptical of statements like that from epodunk.com, describing Magnolia as “a city in Harrison County, in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area.”  Magnolia is a tiny village in a strikingly and absolutely rural area, at least 40 or 50 miles from Omaha or Council Bluffs.  The nearest “city” is Logan, county seat with population of about 1500.

Bonus photograph:  I found this lo-res snapshot from about 1961 or ’62 of my 1939 Ford Deluxe Coupe (then equipped with Oldsmobile V8 and running gear,  tuck & roll upholstery, and oversize BFGoodrichs on the rear), parked in front of the lower Magnolia farm house garage.  Note that the tree on the right side of the photo is the same tree that appears at the left hand of the frame in the “Lower Farm” photo above which shows resting cattle with the Land Rover at right foreground.
39Ford